Ron Weitzman: Taking tests and their aftermath

Please excuse me as I get out of the water business for a moment and focus on a subject that I have spent most of my working life on: how best to test students to measure what they have learned and to assess what they are able to do with it.

Educational testing has been a whipping boy of teachers for years, but most aggressively since the advent of No Child Left Behind. Although I take the side of the testing community on this issue, I believe I understand the predicament of teachers. The normal curve of scholastic ability has two sides, and tests can hold teachers accountable for the learning of students on both of them.

Half of the students are much more difficult to teach than the other half, and the challenge to teach them equally effectively is all but insurmountable. Though an easy target, tests are not to blame, however. To teach without testing would be like playing football without keeping score. It would just not make sense. Testing is necessary.

So what is the problem? It is that we all have different abilities in which we excel just as in the work world we all do things that require different skills. A television commercial makes this problem clear by showing a doctor trying to pitch and a baseball player trying to self-medicate, both unsuccessfully. By testing only a limited set of abilities developed in school, educational tests reflect but do not cause this problem. Some students are going to do well on these tests, and some are not, regardless of the efforts of a teacher. Even the best of teachers aren't miracle workers.

That being the case, should we require teachers to "teach to the test" as required by No Child Left Behind? My answer is yes. That is because tests involved in the program focus on skills that we need in any job that we might have after formal education. We all need to understand what we read and to exercise mathematical reasoning, no matter what we do for a living. We need these skills not only at work or at home managing a family, but to be effective citizens in a democratic government.

We just shouldn't routinely put the blame for falling short of expectations on teachers. We should instead adjust our expectations to correspond more nearly with reality.

I have taken this timeout from water not to get into another enjoyable fray, but to call attention to a book just published by a special member of our community: June Duran Stock.

She is the daughter of the founders of our local California Test Bureau (known since the mid-'60s as CTB/McGraw-Hill), one of the three giant test publishers in the United States. Focusing on June's parents, the book, "The Twenty-Five Cent Gamble," presents a personal and intriguing picture of the early development of this business.

The book is available on Amazon.com, and 20 percent of its cost goes to a local charity. I recommend

the book to everyone who has ever taught or been taught and tested. That, of course, means everyone.

Weitzman, who lives in Carmel, is a local water activist. He holds a doctorate in mathematical psychology from Princeton University. His fields of expertise are educational testing theory and survey design and analysis.